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Home » ColumnsBack to school to reconcile state-private higher education
Matters of dispute within the School and University Education system in the country came up for discussion this week in Parliament, with both, Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella and Education Minister Akila Viraj Kariawasam, sounding somewhat beleaguered with a fight on their hands with those in the Medical profession. Education Minister Kariawasam who has been [...]
War crimes: Our ole master speaks in two voices
Britain is at the forefront of a campaign to have Sri Lanka’s military prosecuted for what it insists were war crimes committed at the end of the war with the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But when it comes to allegations against its own forces, the British Government is unapologetically defensive. The BBC quotes [...]
Preparing the 2017 Budget: Too many cooks may spoil the soup
Preparing the 2017 budget is a challenging task. Bringing down the deficit to 5.5 per cent of GDP; increasing revenue substantially; fiscal reforms to achieve these; finding the fiscal space for development and much needed social expenditure are enormously demanding tasks in the current economic and political context. Furthermore, the processes and procedures of budget [...]
An amendment that defeats its entire purpose
It is unfortunate that a Bill purporting to amend Sri Lanka’s Code of Criminal Procedure Act made public this week takes away existing rights to suspects detained by the police through constitutional precedents. Torture is at the early stages This is in relation to a suspect’s right to consult a lawyer of his or her [...]
Be Lankan and buy Lankan, stop running behind foreign goods
We visited Singapore in 1969. At that time, there were no drainage systems for toilets there, but only the “bucket system.” Singapore developed its economy by trading in gold. In those days people from here went by sea to Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Africa to do jewellry work. The father of Singapore, Prime Minister Lee [...]
Sirisena seeks world support to make SL exemplary democracy
President meets more world leaders and makes more friends at 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly Reconciliation process based on respect for indigenous thinking essential to and accepted by the people of Sri Lanka By Our Political Editor, at the United Nations in New York On the first visit after assuming the mantle of [...]
Doctors’ babies blue; demand better schools
My dear doctors in the GMOA, I thought of writing to you to congratulate you on your campaign of trying to get your children into the top schools in the country by sending a group of doctors to the Ministry of Education to stage a protest at the Ministry and stay there overnight. I think [...]
Patients losing their patience — and people too
So much is being said in Sri Lanka these days about our medicine men, of their practice and practices, their haps and mishaps that the news has been carried by wind and wave, not to mention technology, to this part of the world too. It does remind one of a recent report in the local [...]
Road to reconciliation is no ‘Sinhala only’ one way street
Why Chandrika is wrong: Federalism no answer but a stepping stone to Eelam Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga lost her right eye in a Tiger suicide bomb blast while she, in her role as commander in chief of Lanka’s armed forces, was conducting the war against the LTTE’s terror mission to set up a separate [...]